Follow-up: Defoe the Traveller

- He paid several visits to Scotland in the early 1700s (this was near the time of the Act of Union)

- In 1724-1726, three volumes of his Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain were published.

(It might be useful to remind ourselves of the link between the words travel and travail, implying hardships and tribulations… some of which we’ll read about in the next novel by Fielding)

Followup: Defoe’s Involvement in Politics

- He joined the rebellion when James II (a Catholic!) ascended to the throne in 1685

- Defoe was part of the welcoming party in 1688 for William III (William of Orange—you may have seen part

of his quarters. at Hampton Court). Defoe called William “the Glorious, Great, and Good, and Kind.” Defoe became the leading pamphlet-writer for William III (before newspapers became common)

Defoe’s involvement in Politics

“Englishmen are no more to be slaves to Parliaments than to a King,” Defoe wrote in response to the illegal imprisonment of 16 “gentlemen of quality” for demanding greater defense measures.

Defoe the Journalist

During the reign of Queen Anne he published a periodical called The Review—from 1704 to 1713.

At first it was weekly, but was eventually published three times a week. He continued to publish it even when he was imprisoned at Newgate.

Defoe’s interest in trade

Defoe called trade his “beloved subject,” and—though largely unsuccessfully—he spent a lot of energy starting businesses. At one point, he went bankrupt (he had been insuring ships), owing as much as 17,000 pounds.

- He wrote that “thirteen times I have been rich and poor.”

- He started a brick and tile business later in life

“New Career”

When Defoe turned to the writing of novels, which has earned him the title of “The Father of the English Novel,” he was 59 years old.

Personal Life

He married Mary Tuffley, who bore him eight children (six lived to adulthood)

The couple remained married for 47 years.

Dr. Johnson on Robinson Crusoe

“Was there every yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and The Pilgrim’s Progress?”

Hugh Blair (1783)

“While it is carried on with that appearance of truth and simplicity, which takes a strong hold on the imagination of all Readers, it suggests, at the same time, very useful instruction; by showing how much the native powers of man may be exerted for surmounting the difficulties of any external situation.”

George Chambers

“Few books have ever so naturally mingled amusement with instruction.”

(Chambers is invoking a goal of literature harking back to Horace in Roman days: that literature should be utile et dulce: i.e. not only beautiful and aesthetic but useful.)

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1762)

It is "the one book that teaches all that books can teach." In Emile, the teacher wants his student to read ONLY Robinson Crusoe to "guide his development to a state of reason" and teach him to judge everything by its usefulness.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge - during the Romantic Period

“Crusoe himself is merely a representative of humanity in general. . . . nothing is done, thought, or suffered, or desired but what every man can imagine himself doing, thinking, feeling, or wishing for.”

James Beattie (1783)

“ … founded on a passion still more prevalent than love, the desire of self-preservation. . . . It fixes in the mind a lively idea of the horrors of solitude, and, consequently, of the sweets of social life, and of the blessings we derive from conversation, and mutual aid. . .

. . . the second part of the story is tiresome.”

“. . . There is nothing of love in it.”

John J. Richetti

- established Crusoe as the typical Englishman, as an archetypal "personage of the last two hundred and fifty years of European consciousness."

Walter Allen (The English Novel)

In Robinson Crusoe we see the dramatization of "the inescapable solitariness of each man in his relation to God and the universe."

“Defoe displays his finest gift as a novelist—his insight into human nature. The men and women he writes about are all, it is true, placed in unusual circumstances; they are all, in one sense or another, solitaries; they all struggle, in their different ways, through a life that is a constant scene of jungle warfare; they all become, to some extent, obsessive. They are also ordinary human beings, however, and Defoe, writing always in the first person, enters into their minds and analyzes their motives. His novels are given verisimilitude by their matter-of-fact style and their vivid concreteness of detail; the latter may seem unselective, but it effectively helps to evoke a particular, circumscribed world.”